The Influence of Immigrants on Median Household Income

 Essentially, in the current circumstances, immigration is coming out as a critical issue similar to race and criminal activities that determine the political direction over the vital values of the American society (Alba, Logan & Zhang, 2002). Immigration issues arouse national and economic disquiets. The concerns about immigration revolve around the protection of natural resources for the public good as well as the safety of the communities (Alba et al., 2002).

In other words, the debate revolves around the economic and social contributions of the immigrants. After several years of proportional insignificance, the general public is now increasingly concerned about the need to reform the emigration policies and laws (Ellen, 2000). As indicated, the current heated debate on the immigration policy reform is characterized by disagreements on the comparative data, facts as well as a deficiency in strategic measures (Ellen, 2000).

In fact, policymakers have greatly disagreed on certain strategic issues even though the public majority agrees on some of the suggestions proposed to improve the public and immigrants relations. However, the appropriate framework based on factual data and information forms the foundation on which the immigration policy issues can be settled (Ellen, 2000). In other words, providing the right information based on the actual data forms the foundation on which the issues raised on the immigration policy can be assessed (Ellen, 2000).

Lack of consensus on immigration policy issues is critical and needs to be understood from the context of real data and information (Logan, Stults & Farley, 2004). Even though the current study and policies are based on the census data, it is argued that the census data have several limitations. Generally, the existing data are inadequate in a number of ways. The existing data are one to two decades old. Most of the studies on immigrant economic contributions were based on these data.

Like in most census data, the 2000 census was conducted when the economy was well-performing (Logan et al., 2004). Therefore, the level in which the immigrants competed with the natives for the same job opportunities had the highest likelihood of being underestimated (Logan et al., 2004). Besides, the US census data do not distinguish the legal immigrants, refugees, and undocumented immigrants.